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Theoretical Physicists Say 90% Chance of Societal Collapse Within Several Decades
from the good-news-for-people-who-like-bad-news dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard:
Two theoretical physicists specializing in complex systems conclude that global deforestation due to human activities is on track to trigger the "irreversible collapse" of human civilization within the next two to four decades. If we continue destroying and degrading the world's forests, Earth will no longer be able to sustain a large human population, according to a peer-reviewed paper published this May in Nature Scientific Reports. They say that if the rate of deforestation continues, "all the forests would disappear approximately in 100-200 years." "Clearly it is unrealistic to imagine that the human society would start to be affected by the deforestation only when the last tree would be cut down," they write.
This trajectory would make the collapse of human civilization take place much earlier due to the escalating impacts of deforestation on the planetary life-support systems necessary for human survival -- including carbon storage, oxygen production, soil conservation, water cycle regulation, support for natural and human food systems, and homes for countless species. In the absence of these critical services, "it is highly unlikely to imagine the survival of many species, including ours, on Earth without [forests]" the study points out. "The progressive degradation of the environment due to deforestation would heavily affect human society and consequently the human collapse would start much earlier."
The paper is written by career physicists Dr Gerardo Aquino, a research associate at the Alan Turing Institute in London currently working on political, economic and cultural complex system modeling to predict conflicts; and Professor Mauro Bologna of the Department of Electronic Engineering at the University of Tarapaca in Chile.
"Calculations show that, maintaining the actual rate of population growth and resource consumption, in particular forest consumption, we have a few decades left before an irreversible collapse of our civilization," the paper concludes. "In conclusion our model shows that a catastrophic collapse in human population, due to resource consumption, is the most likely scenario of the dynamical evolution based on current parameters... we conclude from a statistical point of view that the probability that our civilization survives itself is less than 10 percent in the most optimistic scenario. Calculations show that, maintaining the actual rate of population growth and resource consumption, in particular forest consumption, we have a few decades left before an irreversible collapse of our civilization."
Posted by BeauHD a day ago
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Decades? (+1)
Malays2 bowman a few seconds ago
Try very soon, at least in the U.S.
The main reason?
We have been coasting on fake money backed
by debt that has become impossible to pay back.
The only reason that I can see why countries are still
'lending' us money at this point is coercion,
either overt or subtle. But they are growing sick and tired of all this, and they are getting
ready to pull the plug.
Like greedy dumbasses, we transfered most of
our manufacturing base- to China no less, so
we are going to end up with a huge pile of worthless
money, and no way to manufacture the products
people want to buy.
In short, we're fucked.
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Good (-1, Flamebait)
Anonymous Coward 21 hours ago
Good.
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Re: Good (+5, Funny)
Wycliffe 21 hours ago
Yeah, this is good news. I was predicting a societal collapse on November 3rd regardless of who wins. Glad to know we have a few more decades.
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Re: Good (+4, Insightful)
klipclop 21 hours ago
I always joke that Idiocracy the movie was just a satire of where our society is going. Our economic system is based on growth by consumption. Lower income individuals and nations are also incentivised to have lots of kids, while middle income individuals/nations aren't due to costs. So these days I feel humanity is just like a bacteria in a petree dish that will exponemtially expand until the energy is gone. (Then collapse down to a more managable population size)
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Re: Good (+1)
saloomy 18 hours ago
Youâ(TM)re not taking into account the nature of economics. Human beings can engineer their environment. They will do so when it becomes economically feasible to do so. There are more trees now than there have ever been in human civilization.
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Re: Good (-1, Flamebait)
crypticedge 18 hours ago
Youâ(TM)re not taking into account the nature of economics. Human beings can engineer their environment. They will do so when it becomes economically feasible to do so.
It's been economically feasible to do it since the 50's, but it was less profitable than just destroying the environment so we haven't. We're close to a point of no return outside of the tree issue, and showing no efforts to fix the problems it'll cause. When it hits, it'll be too late to start caring. We're also already seeing signs of it. It's called Climate Change, and we're going to suffer because of it
There are more trees now than there have ever been in human civilization.
This is entirely false. At one point the area that makes up the United States was 90% tree coverage, and that was less than 250 years ago, well within civilization. It's now less than 15%. The rain forests are almost gone. They also were destroyed in that same 250 year window.
We're suffering from what is unfettered greed and capitalism, and there's a lot of blood not yet paid to keep capitalism working, since capitalism runs on blood, and blood alone.
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Re: Good (+2, Informative)
_Sharp'r_ 17 hours ago
Still, good news, according to a study in Nature comparing 1982 to 2016, the world has more trees than it did 35 years ago, increased by 2.24 million square kilometers. In fact, forest in the United States has been growing since the 1940s, increasing more than 40%.
Anyway, there is no reason to trust a projection like this. They built a model and left out little things like trees regrowing and being planted in order to weight it as heavily towards doomsday as they could. Garbage in, garbage out.
This article and study are garbage.
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Re: Good (+1)
Anonymous Coward 8 hours ago
Funny how the solution to every problem is "more government control".
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Re: Good
Anonymous Coward 3 hours ago
people certainly cant control themselves.
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Re: Good (+1)
kackle 6 hours ago
Did the study say anything about the size/age of the trees? 10 saplings surely don't compare to 1 century-old Oak.
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Re: Good (+1)
saloomy 4 hours ago
The saplings will grow faster catch up than the oak would have. Also, because the wood is an economic resource, there is incentive to grow it quickly. We would water the trees and fertilize them well, which in turn makes them even more productive.
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Re: Good (+1)
kackle an hour ago
Well, it doesn't have to be an Oak. I'm just saying that a younger tree is not the same as an older tree. Oxygen production. Wood supply. Carbon capture. Number of leaves/shade produced. Soil erosion prevention. Biodiversity/home provision. Etc.
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Re: Good (+1)
DontBeAMoran 6 hours ago
Anyway, there is no reason to trust a projection like this. They built a model and left out little things like trees regrowing and being planted in order to weight it as heavily towards doomsday as they could. Garbage in, garbage out.
Don't just throw your garbage out! That's more pollution!
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Re: Good (+1)
t4eXanadu 3 hours ago
The study is talking about a model of deforestation on a planetary scale, and your counterargument is: but in the US...
What are tree regrowth rates in the Amazon, or the forests of Indonesia, for example? There's a lot of deforestation occurring in countries that are not the United States. You know, the rest of the planet.
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Re: Good (+1)
_Sharp'r_ 2 hours ago
Maybe you should go back and re-read that first sentence again. Pay particular attention to the word "world"...
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Re: Good (+1)
Areyoukiddingme an hour ago
The study is talking about a model of deforestation on a planetary scale, and your counterargument is: but in the US...
The study in Nature quoted by the GP says "the world... increased by 2.24 million square kilometers." The GP then went on to be specific about the US numbers. But it applies globally. The study in TFA is hot garbage, using literally wrong data as its entire premise.
Now it's true that global forestation is still well below where it was 600 years ago. We've got a long way to go. But human-managed reforestation is happening quite steadily all over the world. China's and India's efforts are especially impressive. They're doing it for water management purposes, cultivating grasslands and then trees in order to retain water on desert that was induced by humans more than 1000 years ago. It's working too. The presence of grass and trees changes local weather patterns, and what was artificially irrigated becomes self-sustaining as precipitation changes and local water retention rises substantially, both as a natural result of the vegetation and because humans are sculpting mini-water retention berms into the soil to help the plants along.
In short, the paper in TFA is 40 years out of date and should be withdrawn entirely. It's based on a fantasy that doesn't exist.
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Re: Good (+2)
kenai_alpenglow 8 hours ago
90%?? 15%?? Where did you get those numbers? Kansas/Nebraska/etc never had that coverage. Alaska? Nevada? Utah? That blows 90% waaay out of the water. 15%? Not around here and most places in the Easterm CONUS. Demonstrably false--look at Google Maps.
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Re: Good (+1)
alkurta 4 hours ago
"At one point the area that makes up the United States was 90% tree coverage" This is entirely not true. In the early 19th century, before the invention of the steel plow by John Deere, the soil of the Great Plains was thought to be of very poor quality because very few trees grew there. The 90% figure does sound similar to the legend of Daniel Boone and early Tennessee. It was said that when he first ventured into Tennessee, there were so many trees, that a squirrel could travel from one end of the state to another without touching the ground.
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Re: Good
sydbarrett74 11 hours ago
There are more trees now than there have ever been in human civilization.
Tree farms and orchards don't have anywhere close to the biodiversity of naturally evolved forests. That's the entire problem: monoculture.
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Re: Good (+1)
saloomy 4 hours ago
Not from a productivity of O2 standpoint
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More like 100%
Anonymous Coward 7 hours ago
I predict 100% chance of societal collapse within the next 4 years ago. Seriously, I spent most of yesterday trying to convince people they shouldn't take medical advice from someone who thinks cysts are caused by demon sperm. Collapse isn't coming folks, we're already neck deep in it.
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Re: Good (-1, Flamebait)
Anonymous Coward 21 hours ago
Whoever these two are, they aren't educated. Take the following statement:
'Clearly it is unrealistic to imagine that the human society would start to be affected by the deforestation only when the last tree would be cut down.'
It is grammatically incorrect and sounds strange to anyone who has received an education. A proper way to word that statement is:
'Clearly, it is unrealistic to imagine human society being affected by deforestation only when the last tree is cut down.'
If they can't even master language, then I don't place any faith in their ability to master science.
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Re: Good (+3, Insightful)
Anonymous Coward 21 hours ago
You know someone has found a cogent argument to disprove the point some else is making making, when they start correcting the grammar of the other party.
While in reality, by being able to correct the grammar, they only prove that the point the other party was making came across well enough.
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Re: Good (-1, Troll)
Anonymous Coward 16 hours ago
Anyone who is uneducated in base knowledge cannot be well educated in advanced knowledge, especially when their shortcoming is in language. The reason you are insecure and defensive because you are uneducated yourself and don't like being reminded of that fact.
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Re: Good
Anonymous Coward 11 hours ago
Base knowledge... you just made that expression up, didn't you?
Anyone educated in deductive logic which is used in all the sciences, philosophy, or modern justice systems, ought to understand that a circumstantial ad hominem holds little weight as a counter argument. Though, together with other frequently used non sequiturs like straw man arguments, tu quoque, and false dichotomy it proved to work very well on the uneducated masses.
That's probably why politicians love this non sequitur reasoning so much. Because the majority of their constituents aren't educated in deductive logic.
Take Albert Einstein for example. His use of the English language wasn't great, which can be witnessed by listening to some audio recordings of him. Does that invalidate his work on the inner photoelectric effect, special and general relativity?
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Re: Good
Anonymous Coward 21 hours ago
There's at least one or two logical fallacies in what you just posted but I really don't feel like going to the trouble to figure out which ones.
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Re: Good (+1)
Salton Pepper 20 hours ago
Just stick with the Slashdot "go to" fallacy: straw man argument, or anything else that was covered in "Intro To Logic 101". Throw in a car analogy for good measure and then tell Creimer to go fuck himself. Congratulations: you're now a full- fledged Slashdotter!!!
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And I burned all my mod points yesterday (+1)
CaptAubrey 7 hours ago
You would have gotten a "funny". You captured pretty well how 80% of the post/threads go down. I used to be a 6 digit /. user, had them retire my account a year ago when the AC postings turned the site into a ghetto. Of course they changed the rules 3 weeks after I gave up the original account.
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Re: Good (+1)
Synonymous Cowered 20 hours ago
Sounds perfectly fine to me. Maybe you are the one not educated.
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Re: Good (+1, Insightful)
chmod a+x mojo 20 hours ago
You should ask for a refund on your education if you can't parse professional writing, as your educational institute has obviously failed you by giving you a passing grade.
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Re: Good (+4, Informative)
ClickOnThis 20 hours ago
In my lifetime, I have encountered many very intelligent, well-educated people who speak English as a second language, and have trouble with it. And yet people listen to their imperfect English and overlook minor errors because they have something important to say, and they're doing English-speakers a favor by saying it in their language.
By their names, I surmise the authors are not native English-speakers. IMHO, in no way do their minor language-errors indicate a lack of education or intelligence. Just look at their titles and institutional affiliations.
I speak a second language (French) and I am grateful for the encouragement and patience that native-speakers have shown towards me, especially when I make mistakes.
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Re: Good (+1)
nospam007 20 hours ago
"It is grammatically incorrect and sounds strange to anyone who has received an education."
How did you know?
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Re: Good (+2)
Zontar The Mindless 19 hours ago
For bonus points, please repeat your post in grammatically and idiomatically flawless Spanish.
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Re: Good
Anonymous Coward 19 hours ago
Maybe we should make a foundation and an encyclopedia of all knowledge so we can rebuild faster after the collapse.
RIP Asimov
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oh well (+1)
Anonymouse Cowtard 21 hours ago
At least we were warned.
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Re: oh well (+5, Informative)
lobiusmoop 21 hours ago
The Club Of Rome warned of this nearly 50 years ago in 'The Limits To Growth', it's hardly news.
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Re: oh well (+1)
Anonymous Coward 21 hours ago
The Club Of Rome warned of this nearly 50 years ago in 'The Limits To Growth', it's hardly news.
Go to the next RNC convention, spread the word and be amazed at the reaction.
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Re: oh well (+4, Insightful)
phantomfive 20 hours ago
The warning of the destruction of society is older than writing. The messengers change, the causes are different, the message is the same.
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Re: oh well (+4, Insightful)
Mr. Dollar Ton 16 hours ago
And practically every society in human history has been destroyed more or less accordingly.
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Re: oh well (+1)
Bongo 15 hours ago
I don't know about trees but the big scary one I've heard is soil degradation. There are only fifty or sixty harvests left, then everything ends.
Because there's nothing natural about agriculture, which we have been doing for twelve thousand years, and every so often we deplete the soil.
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Re: oh well (+1)
rtb61 13 hours ago
Keep in mind it is societies that fail, not the entire planets societies that will fail. As in all things some will do better than others, and as a result they will become by far the most popular place to go and as a result will have the most secure and restrictive borders possible.
Those barriers will go up hard and pretty fast, backed by military means and of course major oceans and seas make the most secure barrier. You can pick which countries will do the worst, those in the most unstable predicament.
So Africa doing the worst. South America will be a little all over the place, some countries doing better at times than others and sometimes doing worse. The USA, well, down to how much they cut back on defence spending and invest in infrastructure spending instead, taking a major economic or going under really quite badly. The EU, well, Africa's problem are the EU problems after that dominatrix Merkel's little immigrant gamble, it will get to sink and shoot down.
South East Asia will also be hit and miss, they are already down pretty low, they are now looking to increase manufacturing so they will sort of tide it through. Russia and China will do well together and take a bunch of others along with them, resources and manufacturing. The same stark choice applies to Japan and Australia, either economically joining together manufacturing and resources or let the US take them down with the USA in an orgy of mindless corruption. There are not many chairs left and when the financialisation bullshit music ends, people will be left to pay that price to varying degrees.
Planned trading blocks will be the only way out, for the USA, they have to make South America work properly but currently the USA retains control via corrupting those countries and making them much worse partners but more exploitable for a handful of extremely corrupt US corporations, destroying the future of the USA to feed insatiable greed now.
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Re: oh well (+2)
Mr. Dollar Ton 11 hours ago
Unrestricted greed is what will put the planetary civilization to death. The only way out is developing sustainable economies, better redistribution of resources and heavy investment in science, including science that allows us to build a positively better society. Spending resources on "protecting what we have" will not work very well, because it will divert them from what is necessary to achieve the goal of sustainability.
The knowledge, the technologies and the tools are available, what's missing is the mindset. And it is missing because of the indoctrination into "individualism" and "capitalism" and "free markets" and "soshulism is bad", proselytized by the many propaganda arms of the US oligarchy and swallowed whole by the unwashed and badly educated "middle class" masses, the worst victims of Dunning-Kruger.
The "civilization" dying isn't necessarily a bad thing, though. If a "civilization" is stupid enough to not realize greed is harmful and must be managed, its disappearance is probably an outcome closer to the optimal.
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Re: oh well (+2)
Otis B. Dilroy III 16 hours ago
I agree regarding the nature of all past warnings. But they warned of us being destroyed via war, greed, religious fundamentalism, famine,... other external factors.
But the situation is different now. With apologies to Roger Waters, the current situation is that we are on the verge of amusing ourselves to death.
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Re: oh well (+1)
phantomfive 15 hours ago
Your idea that "being amused" is more deadly than war seems counter-intuitive.
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Re: oh well (+1)
Actually, I do RTFA 15 hours ago
The vast majority of societies have been destroyed. So at least some of the messages are accurate. I'm not sure what percentage that is, but it's could easily be at a reasonable rate. In fact, I'm not sure of what famously false warnings there are, but I am aware of famously true ones.
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Re: oh well (+1)
phantomfive 13 hours ago
Were they destroyed, or did they evolve?
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Re: oh well (+1)
Actually, I do RTFA 6 hours ago
They were destroyed, thanks for asking. Usually an internal weakening brought about by what people were warning about followed by an external actor saying "ooh, land/resources". Although sometimes that second step was unnecessary if the internal weakening was sufficient.
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Don't worry - be happy
Anonymous Coward 13 hours ago
The majority of the problem is due to Americans - they consume far more than normal people.
But Trump has acted decisively on this - he has already killed 150,000 Americans in less than a year, and is working hard to increase the death rate. If you keep him in power for another couple of decades, there will be no Americans left - problem solved.
--
You have the right to remain dead.
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Re: oh well (+1)
guruevi 18 hours ago
I think the Bible prophesied this at well. 50 years ago they said they had 50 years, now they say we still have 50 years, things change, people change, most of the time for the better. The US has slashed its emissions while the EU stopped increasing as well. China and India are the ones to track now.
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Re: oh well (+1)
JillElf 18 hours ago
Before we get too holier than thou, part of the problem is we moved production from here to there for cost savings from cheaper labor and, wait for it, looser environmental regulations.
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Re: oh well (+1)
arglebargle_xiv 17 hours ago
I think the Bible prophesied this at well. 50 years ago they said they had 50 years, now they say we still have 50 years, things change, people change
... hairstyles change, interest rates fluctuate. For as long as a single man is forced to cower under the iron fist of oppression, as long as a child cries out in the night, or a reality TV host can be elected president, we must continue the struggle.
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Re: oh well (+5, Insightful)
Qwertie 21 hours ago
As a volunteer moderator at Denial101x (an anti-climate-science denial MOOC), the idea that civilization is on a rapid path to some kind of "point of no return" in 20-40 years is news to me.
The main journal "Nature" is considered prestigious, but I'm not sure about "Nature Scientific Reports". It's certainly odd for us to treat theoretical physicists, rather than ecologists or silviologists or rainforest specialists, as experts in this topic. Also, the presence of multiple grammar errors in the very first paragraph of this "peer-reviewed" paper is strange to say the least. I'm not going to read the whole paper before posting on /. (since it would push this post way down the page) but I must say that my first impression is deep skepticism.
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Re: oh well (+4, Informative)
phantomfive 20 hours ago
This data is the core data of their argument. From there, they used a rather simple model with some scary-looking equations.
The equations are just a complex way of extrapolating from the dataset in the first link, taking into account population growth. Of course reforestation could change things, as the paper mentions.
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the model relies on super simple assumptions (+4, Insightful)
mbkennel 20 hours ago
Simple super assumptions like that used to model Easter Island collapse. That there are two parameters, human population and forest cover and quadratic differential equations. And that forest is the primary resource governing human population and preventing exponential population growth.
And the civilizational "collapse" that comes out of their models means things like population declining from peaks of 6-8 billion to 2 billion or so by 2500 and decline slowing from there.
And there is an assumption that the regeneration timescale of forest is 1/1000 yr^-1. This again assumes something like only regrowing full 'old growth forest' but it's much more heterogenous.
Then it goes on in a second part of the paper to modeling technology as a stochastic process and doing some fancy tricks to evaluate whether we will get to "Dyson Sphere" level of technological ability to live off planet in time to save us from the issue from somehow being uniquely dependent on The Forest as our primary resource proxy.
The obvious problem: "maybe that technological development that gives us warp drive and free energy might also break that iron limit you've imposed between human population and The Forest"? But no, that isn't modeled. It's escape The Forest Or Die.
I mean it's a fun use of modeling in a scary bottle but I think it has little predictive use (and I was once a theoretical physicist working on nonlinear dynamics).
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Re: the model relies on super simple assumptions (+1)
mbkennel 20 hours ago
and now I'm not sure it wasn't a joke paper as a sociological test to see what can get through peer review.....
The criterion for Escaping the Tyranny Of The Forest is literally achieving an energy consumption of the planet equal to the energy output of the Sun, and as the stochastic model says that's unlikely to happen in ~185 years or so, we're Doomed. So if we just get maybe to Ringworld level oh we're not gonna make it?
It's silly, like a drunk joke written up.
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Re: the model relies on super simple assumptions (+1)
JP205 17 hours ago
I'm starting to wonder if it might have been generated by an AI.
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Re: the model relies on super simple assumptions (+1)
mbkennel 16 hours ago
Describing the AI that made it would be a fantastic paper---I doubt AI is that good at all, and would require real general AI ability at a fairly high level even to come up with this garbage.
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Re: oh well (+4, Interesting)
Qwertie 20 hours ago
Yup, I get a lot of red flags just from two sentences in the first paragraph of the main section ("Model and Results"). The paper says
"Between 2000 and 2012, 2.3 million Km^2 of forests around the world were cut down which amounts to 2âxâ10^5 Km^2 per year. At this rate all the forests would disappear approximatively in 100â"200 years."
Checking the reference to this, it says "between 2000 and 2012 [...], 888,000 square miles (2.3 million square kilometers) of forest was lost, and 308,900 square miles (0.8 million square kilometers) regrew."
So, there are several red flags here:
- The reference is a URL, not a scientific paper - even though the URL appears to be discussing the results of a scientific paper, they quoted the web page instead of the paper itself. No, this is not normal in scientific publishing.
- It's a URL from 2013, rather than more recent information
- The number 2x10^5 Km^2 is imprecise, as 2.3 million divided by 13 years is 1.77x10^5 Km^2 per year
- The paper refers to the gross loss "2.3 million" rather than the net loss which is 1.50 million square kilometers.
- It's unclear where "100-200 years" came from. The authors do not, in this paragraph, refer to any model of future forest loss by themselves or other authors, rather it sounds like they did a simple linear extrapolation. A quick Google search tells me there are "just over 4 billion hectares" of forests in the world which is 40 million square kilometers. Linearly extrapolating the net loss of 1.50x10^5 km^2 per year, we get, er... 266 years. How about the gross loss? Well, 40 million / 2x10^5 Km^2/y = 200 years, just at the edge of the range "100-200 years", but remember that the number 2x10^5 was too high.
I could go further and find more flaws in the paper, but in my experience when you see lots of red flags at the very beginning of a paper, it doesn't suddenly get better when you keep reading. So I'm going to stop wasting my time and call BS on this. I'll just mention a couple of other obvious issues that jump out at me.
- The first sentence of the next paragraph says "the current situation of our planet has a lot in common with the deforestation of Easter Island as described in [3]" Reference 3 is a paper with the the same lead author, and the current paper says nothing about why the author thinks he is justified in applying his model of Easter Island to our entire planet. Moreover, since it's the same author, we can expect the same scientific rigor in Reference 3 that we see in the current paper.
- It is conventional in scientific papers to review publications by other scientists on the same topic before adding your own "novel" contribution. This paper doesn't do this.
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Re: oh well (+3, Informative)
Qwertie 19 hours ago
Correction: the net loss of 1.50 million km^2 over 13 years is 1.15x10^5 km^2 per year, so the linear extrapolation result should be 40,000,000 / (115,000) = 347 years.
Sigh... Slashdot will never have an edit feature, will it? More than that, they should retract the story from the front page.
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Re: oh well
Anonymous Coward an hour ago
Qwertie, you have not understand anything about research.
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Re: oh well (+1)
guruevi 18 hours ago
You're also missing the fact that the regrowth is largely human-planted. Natural regrowth is incredibly hard to quantify because it doesn't happen in large areas, the US now has 380% more trees than they had 100 years ago because regrowth happens a lot faster than anticipated. Globally, the total amount of trees has increased 7% over the last 30 years.
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Re: oh well
Anonymous Coward 18 hours ago
You're also missing the fact that the regrowth is largely human-planted./quote.
And you're missing the fact it's mainly in China not the US. But China bad right...
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And Easter Island collapse may not be so simple (+1)
mbkennel 16 hours ago
https://www.scientificamerican....
The evidence of Rapa Nui collapse before European contact as a result of ecological suicide is weak. It could have been the same result as in many other isolated societies meeting more technologically advanced, numerous, disease-carrying, treasure-hunting colonialists.
"The new research indicates that ahu construction began soon after the first Polynesian settlers arrived on the island and continued even after European contact in 1722. This timeline argues against the hypothesized societal collapse occurring around 1600.
The downturn of the islanders, DiNapoli and his colleagues claim, began only after Europeans ushered in a period characterized by disease, murder, slave raiding, and other conflicts."
If humans chop down all the forests, it's because our civilization already collapsed.
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Re: oh well (+1)
Muros 13 hours ago
"between 2000 and 2012 [...], 888,000 square miles (2.3 million square kilometers) of forest was lost, and 308,900 square miles (0.8 million square kilometers) regrew."
How much new growth is commercial, and how much of it do you think supports a thriving ecosystem? There are commercial, monoculture forestry plantations beside my parents' house that were planted about 40 years ago. It is only in the last few years, when it is almost ready for harvesting, that species like squirrels, buzzards, and pine martens have appeared there.
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Re: oh well (+1)
0111 1110 11 hours ago
Is the scientific method a process of searching for red flags? I don't remember that from my philosophy of science course at uni. Shouldn't you be reading their code and checking their supporting assumptions instead of red flagging?
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Re: oh well (+1)
Qwertie 33 minutes ago
You don't think these facts cast doubt on the authors' competence?
There are over 100,000 scientific papers tagged with climate change alone, and not all papers have equal quality. It impractical for most of us to even read the titles of all these papers. So which of those 100,000+ should we pay most attention to - the ones with man-years of work behind them by large teams gathering reams of data? The ones that make the most clickbaity headlines? The ones that look like they belong on some crank's blog?
If you decide that the credibility of a paper depends on how much you like the conclusion, rather than the quality of the work, that is the path to Dark Side Epistemology, my friend.
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Re: oh well (+2)
getuid() 11 hours ago
What you perceive as "red flags" is just a difference of scientific culture between (theoretical) physicists and you. This quote from the paper gives you a hint at what I mean (which I will also explain in the following):
[...] is a simplified model which nonetheless allows us to extrapolate thetimescales of the processes involved [...]
Translation: "We're not interested in exact numbers, just ballpark estimates; if it has the same number of digits (i.e. the same order of magnitude), we're calling it a match. The models are very crude, anyway, so we couldn't model more exact even if we wanted to." Now to your red flags:
- The reference is a URL, not a scientific paper - even though the URL appears to be discussing the results of a scientific paper, they quoted the web page instead of the paper itself. No, this is not normal in scientific publishing.
- It's a URL from 2013, rather than more recent information
Who cares? The takeaway message here is "there's roughly 10^7 square km, we're roughly through a rather large 2-digit percentage of it".
- The number 2x10^5 Km^2 is imprecise, as 2.3 million divided by 13 years is 1.77x10^5 Km^2 per year
If they had written "1.77", a physicist would call it by its name: fake precision. The input data had 1 significant digit (60 million square km, is essentially 6*10^7; so here, "6" is the significant digit). Formulating a result with 3 significant digits (1.77) is faking a precision which you don't have, and is generally regarded a sign of bad / dishonest science in itself.
- The paper refers to the gross loss "2.3 million" rather than the net loss which is 1.50 million square kilometers.
What they actually attempt to model is deforestation. What they're interested in is the deforestation rate owing to our current economoy -- which is 2.3 million sq. km. That's now many trees we've really cut down.
They don't model active repopulation attempts. (That's a (deliberate) limitation of their model they're upfront about. If you want to squabble about that, do the math and show how it would change their conclusion; if you do, please publish, it would probably end up in Nature.)
- It's unclear where "100-200 years" came from. [...] Linearly extrapolating the net loss [...] we get, er... 266 years."
Short: "100-200 years" means "substantially less than 1000, substantially more than 50".
Long: is that consumption rate going to remain constant as our population grows (likely not), or is it going to accelerate (likely yes)? How exactly do we model that? Yes, in principle we *could* try to, but that would make everything a lot more complicated. Key to physics is to make as many crude approximations as we can in order to be able to calculate, but to be as precise as necessary in order to not throw out the window the effect we want to explain.
For this purpose, 266 years is essentially same as "100-200 years".
- The first sentence of the next paragraph says "the current situation of our planet has a lot in common with the deforestation of Easter Island as described in [3]" Reference 3 is a paper with the the same lead author, and the current paper says nothing about why the author thinks he is justified in applying his model of Easter Island to our entire planet. Moreover, since it's the same author, we can expect the same scientific rigor in Reference 3 that we see in the current paper.
Emphasis mine. Of course he does. From the paper:
Like the old inhabitants of Easter Island we too, at least for few more decades,cannotleave the planet. The consumption of the natural resources,in particular the forests, is in competition with our technologicallevel. Higher technological level leads to growing population and higher forest consumption (largera0)
You just need to actually read the paper to... you know... see the arguments :-)
- It is conventional in scientific papers to review publications by other scientists on the same topic before adding your own "novel" contribution. This paper doesn't do this.
No, it's not. That is, it depends on the science and on the scientist. In physics, you build your argument in the order in which you see fit. Typically, it's easier and/or more paedagogic to start with "state of affairs" first. But you don't have to do that if you can bring your point across more easily starting in another manner. Also, "state of affairs" may include significant work of yours, if you've been active in the field in the past. So there's no problem in building on that (it's actually dishonest not to -- it's called double-selling).
If you want to debate the validity of somebody's argument, you debate it on its argumentative merits, not whether it's introduced in reference to prior work first or last.
But again, keep in mind that this is a rough, single-digit estimate. If the paper says 20-40 years to live, but it actually turns out that 80 is the number we end up with in reality, the key insight still remains.
In yet another words: "20-40 years to go" does not mean "in 20-40 years, we're gone". Instead it actually means "considering the crude approximations we've made, the model gives 20-40 years; with more exact numbers, and a better model, that number will be more exact".
If you want to criticize, you need to show that his basic assumptions are waaay off. And "waaay off" is pretty much defined by the paper, too: in equation (2) they essentially ignored the right-hand side because it gives contributions that are one order of magnitude different from the rest of the stuff they're calculating. So if you can show that any of their numbers, assumptions, simplifications etc. is likely to be off by a factor of ~10 or so, or lead to results that are off by the same factor, that's essentially a valid critique.
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Re: oh well
Anonymous Coward an hour ago
What you perceive as "red flags" is just a difference of scientific culture between (theoretical) physicists and you. This quote from the paper gives you a hint at what I mean (which I will also explain in the following):
[...] is a simplified model which nonetheless allows us to extrapolate thetimescales of the processes involved [...]
Translation: "We're not interested in exact numbers, just ballpark estimates; if it has the same number of digits (i.e. the same order of magnitude), we're calling it a match. The models are very crude, anyway, so we couldn't model more exact even if we wanted to." Now to your red flags:
- The reference is a URL, not a scientific paper - even though the URL appears to be discussing the results of a scientific paper, they quoted the web page instead of the paper itself. No, this is not normal in scientific publishing.
- It's a URL from 2013, rather than more recent information
Who cares? The takeaway message here is "there's roughly 10^7 square km, we're roughly through a rather large 2-digit percentage of it".
- The number 2x10^5 Km^2 is imprecise, as 2.3 million divided by 13 years is 1.77x10^5 Km^2 per year
If they had written "1.77", a physicist would call it by its name: fake precision. The input data had 1 significant digit (60 million square km, is essentially 6*10^7; so here, "6" is the significant digit). Formulating a result with 3 significant digits (1.77) is faking a precision which you don't have, and is generally regarded a sign of bad / dishonest science in itself.
- The paper refers to the gross loss "2.3 million" rather than the net loss which is 1.50 million square kilometers.
What they actually attempt to model is deforestation. What they're interested in is the deforestation rate owing to our current economoy -- which is 2.3 million sq. km. That's now many trees we've really cut down.
They don't model active repopulation attempts. (That's a (deliberate) limitation of their model they're upfront about. If you want to squabble about that, do the math and show how it would change their conclusion; if you do, please publish, it would probably end up in Nature.)
- It's unclear where "100-200 years" came from. [...] Linearly extrapolating the net loss [...] we get, er... 266 years."
Short: "100-200 years" means "substantially less than 1000, substantially more than 50".
Long: is that consumption rate going to remain constant as our population grows (likely not), or is it going to accelerate (likely yes)? How exactly do we model that? Yes, in principle we *could* try to, but that would make everything a lot more complicated. Key to physics is to make as many crude approximations as we can in order to be able to calculate, but to be as precise as necessary in order to not throw out the window the effect we want to explain.
For this purpose, 266 years is essentially same as "100-200 years".
- The first sentence of the next paragraph says "the current situation of our planet has a lot in common with the deforestation of Easter Island as described in [3]" Reference 3 is a paper with the the same lead author, and the current paper says nothing about why the author thinks he is justified in applying his model of Easter Island to our entire planet. Moreover, since it's the same author, we can expect the same scientific rigor in Reference 3 that we see in the current paper.
Emphasis mine. Of course he does. From the paper:
Like the old inhabitants of Easter Island we too, at least for few more decades,cannotleave the planet. The consumption of the natural resources,in particular the forests, is in competition with our technologicallevel. Higher technological level leads to growing population and higher forest consumption (largera0)
You just need to actually read the paper to... you know... see the arguments :-)
- It is conventional in scientific papers to review publications by other scientists on the same topic before adding your own "novel" contribution. This paper doesn't do this.
No, it's not. That is, it depends on the science and on the scientist. In physics, you build your argument in the order in which you see fit. Typically, it's easier and/or more paedagogic to start with "state of affairs" first. But you don't have to do that if you can bring your point across more easily starting in another manner. Also, "state of affairs" may include significant work of yours, if you've been active in the field in the past. So there's no problem in building on that (it's actually dishonest not to -- it's called double-selling).
If you want to debate the validity of somebody's argument, you debate it on its argumentative merits, not whether it's introduced in reference to prior work first or last.
But again, keep in mind that this is a rough, single-digit estimate. If the paper says 20-40 years to live, but it actually turns out that 80 is the number we end up with in reality, the key insight still remains.
In yet another words: "20-40 years to go" does not mean "in 20-40 years, we're gone". Instead it actually means "considering the crude approximations we've made, the model gives 20-40 years; with more exact numbers, and a better model, that number will be more exact".
If you want to criticize, you need to show that his basic assumptions are waaay off. And "waaay off" is pretty much defined by the paper, too: in equation (2) they essentially ignored the right-hand side because it gives contributions that are one order of magnitude different from the rest of the stuff they're calculating. So if you can show that any of their numbers, assumptions, simplifications etc. is likely to be off by a factor of ~10 or so, or lead to results that are off by the same factor, that's essentially a valid critique.
This is true. Because this is unknown territory (the collapse of civilisation) you can never get exact numbers. If someone would conclude that "Civilsation collapses on the date 12 june in the year 2065, precisely at 12:34 o clock" - everybody would question that research. Therefore, what is interesting, is the trajectory, the big picture. If the big picture analysis says We are extinct in 50 years, what it actually says is we are extinct quite close in the future. If the analysis says We are extinct in 121.000 years, then there is no immediate risk. Theoretical physicists are experts on this, how to extrapolate into unknown territory. And theoretical physics is extraordinarily successfull todate.
Because you, "Qwertie" question the ballpark numbers and ask for exact numbers, the conclusion is "Qwertie" have not understand anything about true research. Researchers are going into unknown territory - that is true research. If you are a doctor and classify different types of cancer - that is NOT research. Qwertie, are you a doctor?
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Re: oh well (+1)
djinn6 an hour ago
Oblig.
https://xkcd.com/605/.
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Re: oh well (+1)
0111 1110 12 hours ago
You sound like a catholic first hearing about the one true god, Allah. Of course your first reaction is deep skepticism. Nevertheless start getting your things in order. It will all be over soon.
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Re: oh well (+1)
Aighearach 19 hours ago
Indeed, now ask the dentists about endangered species.
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It's coming (+4, Insightful)
Ziest 21 hours ago
It had to end sometime.
And people will be surprised when it starts. Human are not very good at listening to warnings.
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Re: It's coming (+5, Insightful)
Anonymous Coward 21 hours ago
More times people have been surprised when it didn't end. Humans are not very good at discerning fables from reality.
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Re: It's coming (+1)
Mostly a lurker 21 hours ago
As the collapse starts, and a scramble for scarce resources begins, it is not going to be the environmental destruction that finishes us. The nuclear conflagration will prevent a long drawn out affair. I am taking the optimistic view that a nuclear conflict does not start even earlier.
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Re: It's coming (+2)
timeOday 21 hours ago
Agreed, it won't be resource depletion directly. The proximate cause will be squabbling over resources, and over "who started it." Which really is the root of our problem - our monkey-brains are made to fight over bananas, not collective long-term planning to ensure there is no banana scarcity to fight over.
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Re: It's coming
Anonymous Coward 12 hours ago
It may be sooner. The US and Russia both value their civilizations, their families, and their children over victory in war. They are not going to pre-emptively strike the other because they have everything to lose.
However, with countries like Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and states who would happily throw their families into the abyss because they believe they will be martyrs... is how it will start. Just like World War 1, the big guys will be drawn in. Iran nukes Israel, Israel nukes back, bringing in Russia, Pakistan decides it is a good time to nuke India, North Korea nukes South Korea, Japan, and Australia, the US strikes back, and China retaliates.
It might just be that south America and Africa might be where civilization keeps going while the northern hemisphere is mainly glowing glass. There is a reason why China and Iran are establishing colonies in Venezuela and Nicaragua.
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Re: It's coming
Anonymous Coward 7 hours ago
People like the government Trumps might value their family, but they don't seem to value their civilization that much.
You also see a similar pattern for other GOP politicians in this COVID-19 situations, who want to reopen schools so their 'civilization' can be educated while they're going to keep their own children away from those schools.
It's also similar with war. They send the suckers to die, they won't send their own children or even risk themselves.
I'm not exactly sure about Putin. Does he care about the Russians as a civilization? Often it seems he cares more about himself, what the oligarchs want and the national state. Which of course makes him an a lot more reliable leader than Trump for example. So it's unlikely that he would do something irrationally stupid.
I just can't get over the fact that the US elected such a loose cannon to wield that much power. And even with all the shit that happened there's still super staunch supporters. You think if Iran were to nuke Israel, the guy who cancelled the nuclear deal and recognized Jerusalem as the capital would hold back? Or a least hold out longer than Russia?
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Re: It's coming (+1, Insightful)
rmdingler 21 hours ago
The World is going to end today, tomorrow, or a week from next Thursday.
Eventually some Doomsayer will get it right, but they will be little rewarded and not long remembered.
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Re: It's coming (+2)
Mspangler 20 hours ago
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There is always a boom tomorrow.
Susan Ivanova
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Re: It's coming (+1)
rmdingler 18 hours ago
Boom cycle corresponds with a bust cycle; Apologies, Claudia.
Ironically, the growth dependent capitalist market depends upon it. Yet, we're dead set on limiting the immigration necessary to sustain the model.
We are a complicated breed.
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Re: It's coming
Anonymous Coward 3 hours ago
When society collapses it will be a slow thing that happens over generations. There won't be a bright line to predict.
This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper. -- T. S. Eliot
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Re: It's coming (+2)
hey! 18 hours ago
The largest civilization collapse known to scholarship was the Late Bronze Age collapse, which occurred over a period from around 1200 BCE to 1150 BCE. International trade collapsed, educated classes disappeared, a dark age ensued in which writing systems like Linear B were forgotten.
There was a lot going on -- invasions, climate change, drought, famine, technological disruption, volcanoes and earthquakes. Individually things like that happened before, but somehow it was all too much to cope with. Right up to the end in any particular place people acted as if things would return to normal soon. Why wouldn't they believe this? They lived in countries with hundreds or sometimes thousands of years of history.
I think the fact that it all ending was unthinkable probably played some role in their failure to adapt.
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Re: It's coming (+1)
e432776 18 hours ago
Thanks for mentioning this! You are on point, and this collapse is the topic of the book I am currently reading. I recommend the book.
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Re: It's coming (+1)
djinn6 an hour ago
You know who's not involved in the Late Bronze Age Collapse? Everyone who doesn't live near the Mediterranean. That's all of Asia except for the Middle East. All of Australia. All of the Americas. All of Africa except Egypt. The vast majority of humanity did not suffer from a regional conflict centered in Europe.
And in case you haven't noticed, invasions are no longer a thing to worry about for countries with nuclear weapons. Because no matter how much money you think you can make by invading someone else, it all goes up in smokes once they launch.
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Re: It's coming
Anonymous Coward 4 hours ago
It started in the 70s. 1970 was the year we reached peak energy per capita worldwide.
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I'm going to vote democrat. (-1, Troll)
Anonymous Coward 21 hours ago
So this happens next year.
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not seeing the problem here (+1, Insightful)
iggymanz 21 hours ago
If true, forests and other ecosystems can recover, and there will still be humans in a more harmonious relationshp with nature. There is no problem. Things come and go.
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Re: not seeing the problem here (+4, Interesting)
rogoshen1 21 hours ago
it's the interim period you should be worried about. Basically when the groups of armed angry men come to steal your stuff and rape/kill your family, then it will be a 'problem'.
Sure, after all the furore dies down we might live like peaceful druids acting as stewards of nature; but until then it's going to be mad max style anarchy.
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Re: not seeing the problem here (+1, Funny)
Anonymous Coward 21 hours ago
Wow rude. Women are JUST as capable of forming violent loot/rape/murder gangs.
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Re: not seeing the problem here (+1, Insightful)
iggymanz 20 hours ago
Statistically they don't though, mostly a guy thing.
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Re: not seeing the problem here (+1)
Major_Disorder 21 hours ago
it's the interim period you should be worried about. Basically when the groups of armed angry men come to steal your stuff and rape/kill your family, then it will be a 'problem'.
Sure, after all the furore dies down we might live like peaceful druids acting as stewards of nature; but until then it's going to be mad max style anarchy.
The groups of armed angry men will not be coming to steal MY stuff and rape/kill MY family. I will be riding shotgun with them, :)
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Re: not seeing the problem here (+2)
timeOday 21 hours ago
What if the group of angry armed men is the PLA?
Predicting the winning faction isn't so easy, and you aren't necessarily in their pool of candidates. Plenty of intelligent and shrewd men were bombed to smithereens north of the 38th parallel, I'm sure.
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Re: not seeing the problem here (+1)
iggymanz 21 hours ago
haha, no my family and I will be among the very well armed and stocked. Angry groups will choose other targets that won't be pouring death and hell back at them.
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Re: not seeing the problem here (+1)
U0K 20 hours ago
If you're immobile and don't also happen sit in an impenetrable or at least very easy to defend self sufficient fortress, you already lost the longer game.
Being well armed and well stocked in such a situation is not a deterrent. It just makes you more of a pinata.
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Re: not seeing the problem here
Anonymous Coward 20 hours ago
Actually, being well armed can make you as much of a target. Weapons can be as valuable as resources. In such a situation, if I know you've got a lot of weapons, I might start trying to figure out how to strategically take you out and take all your weapons.
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Re: not seeing the problem here (+1)
iggymanz 16 hours ago
"you're might brave in cyberspace, flame-boy." --user friendly
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Re: not seeing the problem here (+1)
Kernel Kurtz 20 hours ago
If you're immobile and don't also happen sit in an impenetrable or at least very easy to defend self sufficient fortress, you already lost the longer game.
Being well armed and well stocked in such a situation is not a deterrent. It just makes you more of a pinata.
Indeed. If you can't withstand incendiary devices, poisoned wells and such, shelter in place won't likely last long.
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Re: not seeing the problem here
Anonymous Coward 20 hours ago
When you run out of oxygen and have incredibly high temperatures because of high carbon dioxide concentrations, being well stocked and armed won't do much good.
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Re: not seeing the problem here (+1)
ChrisMaple 18 hours ago
You're too stupid to live that long.
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Re: not seeing the problem here (+1)
slothman32 20 hours ago
So you are saying, "Screw you, I've got mine."
I hope I get modded flamebait for this.
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Re: not seeing the problem here (+1)
iggymanz 16 hours ago
you're free to get yours too. prepared is better than un.
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